A Smart App for Indian Classical Music

Two decades ago, Muthu Kumar was an eager disciple of the legendary tabla player Zakir Hussain. “When I was studying in Bombay,” Mr. Kumar recalled, “I used to catch three trains and a bus to reach my guru’s place.”

Now an instructor himself, Mr. Kumar finds his students far less willing to surrender their time. He and his wife, a Hindustani singer, teach in a suburban Bangalore home that draws students from within the gated community. But he found it hard to attract students from the complex just down the street, whose schedules happened to be more demanding, and who found the distance between their homes and Mr. Kumar’s enough of an impediment.

To improve the reach of his teaching, Mr. Kumar lent his time and tablas to Musiguru, a new mobile application that allows musicians like him to instruct students in India and abroad remotely using interactive videos.

Unlike Skype, which Mr. Kumar used to teach students here and abroad, the app allows him to watch his pupils’ efforts anytime and record his own feedback, a tool that he says saves him time and improves his instruction.

The app is part of a movement in classical Indian music to embrace digital consumers. And it is one of hundreds of products catering to the wave of new mobile users cropping up in the country. But, like many apps, its ability to capture these users’ time and money, and churn out profitable returns, is still unproven.

Aravind Krishnaswamy, the director of Levitum Software and developer of Musiguru, recently joined over 200 other entrepreneurs at a Bangalore conference on mobile business, hosted by the technology platform YourStory.in.

The developers there, adept at shipping software innovations to other countries, were advised to focus on designing for the domestic market. “For the first time in history, we have a scenario where India is not just a supplier but a market,” Sanjay Anandaram, an advisor at the Venture Partner Seed Fund, told the attendees.

More than 100 million cellphones were shipped to India in the first half of 2012, up 16.6% from a year earlier, according to research firm Formcept. Many of these are going to young Indians, born between 1994 and 2004, who spend about seven hours a day glued to their phones or gaming consoles, Formcept says.

To tap this market quickly and profitably, several analysts claimed app developers should turn to “infotainment,” an umbrella term for India’s sundry music, media, games and film. It is an industry poised to boom, particularly in local languages.

The number of English-speaking mobile users will peak at around 150 million, argued Ashwin Venkatraman, director of Developer Platforms at InMobi, a mobile advertising firm. Yet the number of non-English users could soon top 750 million, he says.

“Infotainment is the sector best placed to capture this instantly,” he said.

But eking out revenues from mobile phones in India, where advertising is nascent, remains a considerable challenge. In a recent report, the Mobile Marketing Association predicted national mobile advertising, now around $33 million, will grow by 40% in 2013. Even then, it won’t reach 1% of total advertising spending.

Twaang, an app featured at the YourStory.in conference, offers a sizable on-demand library of classical Indian music for smartphones. It is among dozens of new startups—from the large distributor Saavn to smaller streaming services—reaching into the now predominantly digital industry.

Vishnu Raned, Twaang’s developer, is relying on targeted ads to turn his free app profitable. He claims there were 900 unique downloads in the first two weeks after its mid-November launch. Next year, Mr. Raned hopes to add a subscription for users wishing to scrap ads.

With Musiguru, Mr. Krishnaswamy has sidestepped the advertising dilemma—his firm splits the revenue from lessons with music teachers who use the app. He can also rely on the scores abroad shelling out for lessons from artists like Mr. Kumar, who, before the app, taught three international students over Skype from his Bangalore apartment.

Mr. Krishnaswamy knows that this app, built for Android and iPhone, fails to reach a majority of Indian mobile users. But building products outside these operating systems can be risky, as the costs of these phones fall and the purchasing turnover continues to rise. “A year from now,” he said, “it’s quite possible a lot of those folks on Nokia phones will switch to Android.”

Many Indian app developers are awaiting this switch. And the music industry is anticipating the maneuvers of Apple’s iTunes, which recently announced its digital arrival.

Indian consumers are willing to pay for digital content, like traditional music, noted Vivek Paul, a consultant with Sony Music Entertainment in Mumbai. In India, music’s popularity is clear, but its money-making potential on the massive mobile market is fuzzy.

“I don’t think it would be fair to say at this point that we can see the right business model,” Mr. Paul concluded.

Mark Bergen is a freelance reporter based in Bangalore. You can follow him on Twitter@mhbergen.

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